FLAW IN SWAZI KING’S VANITY PROJECT

I’m pleased to see that there is at least one voice of sanity surrounding the latest of King Mswati III’s vanity project.

The king, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, is pressing for a ‘Royal Science and Technology Park’ to be built in the kingdom. As I reported on Monday (22 November 2010) this will cost E850 million (120 million US dollars), but no one can explain why it is needed and who will use it.

Project manager Moses Zungu has been talking it up (as you’d expect) and he says that world class researchers will want to come to work at the site.

He even said that the kingdom’s only university, the University of Swaziland (UNISWA), would play a key role in providing expertise at the park.

But this expertise has been exaggerated. And who says so? Academics at the university itself.

When the plan for the science park was unveiled at a meeting at the university, staff very nearly laughed out loud at the suggestion that UNISWA (Chancellor: King Mswati himself) was anywhere close to being a global ‘centre of excellence’.

At the meeting one unnamed academic (when I say ‘unnamed’ I don’t mean he has no name, but that it is an unwise career move to be publicly speaking out against the university, so he/she must remain anonymous) said the government shouldn’t worry about financing a science park it should ‘fund fully the university’s budget’.

For years now UNISWA has been bumping along the bottom with poor facilities. It is a common sight to see students carrying chairs from one classroom to another because there is not enough furniture at the university for them to use during classes.

The anonymous lecturer told Zungu that a project of the magnitude of the science park ‘needs specially educated people with advanced qualifications whom this university cannot produce’.

At present the university doesn’t offer PhD or other doctoral courses (even though it ‘awarded’ an honorary doctorate to Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister). Most of the teaching staff at UNISWA don’t themselves have PhD qualifications and some don’t even have graduate (masters) degrees.

The lack of expertise in Swaziland didn’t worry Zungu. He said expatriates will be brought into Swaziland to get the science park up and running and then Swazi locals will come in as they got properly qualified.

What he didn’t explain was why top quality researchers from across the globe would want to work in Swaziland, a kingdom ruled by King Mswati, and where all dissent is fiercely suppressed and there is no freedom of speech.

This is not an environment where intellectual inquiry thrives.

BLACK WEDNESDAY – SSN MESSAGE

The following is a statement issued by the Swaziland Solidarity Network [SSN] to mark the 20^th anniversary of Black Wednesday, when armed troops and police invaded the University of Swaziland campus to attack students who were demonstrating peacefully.

Swaziland Solidarity Network [SSN] would like to send a strong message of solidarity to Swazi tertiary school students on the 20th commemoration of Black Wednesday.



Black Wednesday was a very tragic date for many innocent students who were brutally assaulted by the country's military forces under orders from the king. This was after they had staged a strike in protest of poor catering facilities among other things.



While the student protests might have yielded minor gains, the plight of Swazi students in general has gotten worse. The country's tertiary institutions remain under resourced & neglected by a regime that sends its own children to expensive exorbitantly expensive institutions outside the country. Moreover, the government aims to stop giving away student loans for tertiary education, a move that will hamper the levels of education in a country already faced with severe economic crises.

As a result it is appropriate that this day be a time for reflecting on the future of students even as they commemorate the past.

Issued By the Swaziland Solidarity Network [SSN] South Africa Chapter

20 YEARS ON: REPRESSION REMAINS

Not much has changed for students in Swaziland since the day 20 years ago this Sunday (14 November 2010) that armed troops and police invaded the University of Swaziland to brutally suppress a peaceful student demonstration.

In the present day, the main progressive student organisation in Swaziland, the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS), states that there is political repression in the kingdom ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, and student leaders are being targeted.

‘We still have an undemocratic government and a military state, [and] the oppression, exploitation and repression of the students and the population at large has reached new greater heights.’

In a statement SNUS said, ‘A number of students leaders have been forced out of the country's institution of higher learning, eg Wandile Dludlu (former president of the Swaziland national union of students and chairperson of Uniswa, Kwaluseni Campus,2005-2006), Bhekie Khumalo (former president of Swaziland College of Technology 2008-2009 and the Swaziland National Union of Students (2009-2010), while others has been forced out of the country, the latest victim being the former president of Uniswa (2009- 2010) and human right activist Pius Vilakati who was forced to leave his studies at the university with one paper left for him to finish his studies.

‘He was being sought by the military police for making a speech on behalf of the students in a funeral of a worker and human right activist [Sipho Jele] who died in police custody for wearing a T-shirt of one of banned political groups.’

SNUS said, ‘All this victimisation, harassment and physical assault of our leaders will not dampen our spirits in a quest for a better country but it will fuel our struggle for democracy and sound education system.’

On 14 November 1990, the Swazi government dispatched armed police and military units to the Uniswa campus to disperse peaceful boycotting students. It was a crackdown of unprecedented violence in the history of the university. In the ensuing melee several students were crippled for life, hundreds injured and one woman successfully sued the government for the loss of an eye.

The students were boycotting classes over a number of issues, including the poor quality of food provided in residence to extremely low allowances and lack of faculty lectures. Among their demands was that a student and lecturer who were members of the banned political organisation, PUDEMO, and who had been charged and acquitted of high treason, should be reinstated at the university.

KING SNUBS UNIVERSITY OF SWAZILAND

King Mswati III of Swaziland has once again shown he has no confidence in his kingdom’s only university, even though he is its chancellor.

The king, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, never sends any of his children to the University of Swaziland (UNISWA), even though it claims to be of international standard.

This week the king’s third son Prince Bandzile Dlamini starts studies at Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE). His elder sister Princess Sikhanyiso graduated this year from Biola University in Los Angeles, California.

The king has so little confidence in his kingdom’s educational system as a whole that he never sends his children to local schools. Prince Bandzile who is aged 20 spent the past five years studying in England.

The king is reckoned to have 25 children (so far) but we cannot be certain, because like the number of wives he has, this is information that the Swazi people are not allowed to know.

Prince Bandzile, who clearly has a very privileged yet sheltered background, told the National newspaper in UAE, ‘I thought that the Middle East would be a good place to go after England. I felt like I wanted some exposure to the world.

‘I was interested in Dubai so I told my embassy to find me the best schools and they recommended Zayed.’

Zayed is a strange choice for someone wanting ‘exposure to the world’. Until this year it only admitted women, but now more than 100 male students are being allowed to join the university. But they will be kept separate from the women as both sexes study and live separately.

The National says he already feels at home in the UAE, which seems not so different from Swaziland.



‘There are many cultural similarities, such as not shaking a woman’s hand,’ he said.

And what will Prince Bandzile be studying? International relations. He says he wants to represent Swaziland in the Foreign Service.

Let’s hope his new university programme includes courses on human rights.

QUALITY AT UNIVERSITY OF SWAZILAND

I see the question of the quality of education at the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) is back in the news.

UNISWA Vice-Chancellor Professor Cisco Magagula has been defending standards at the kingdom’s only university.

He’s been trying to tell us that the class boycotts that his students engage in year after year don’t affect the quality of the diplomas and degrees they get. Fair enough, that’s his job.

The standards have been questioned again because the university has been closed down after students protested – along with students from all the kingdom’s tertiary colleges - against government policies.

Magagula told the Weekend Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, who is also the university’s Chancellor, that there are ‘robust quality assurance measures’ in place at the university.

He then told the Observer that students are required (among other things) to attend classes for so many hours per week. That’s what guarantees the quality.

Hang on. Haven’t the students been missing their classes and therefore not studying for the required period of time? In the years that I worked at UNISWA I’ve lost count of the number of times students have boycotted classes. Sometimes it was only for a day, other times, like during the dispute over semesterisation that dragged on over 2007 and 2008, the university closed down for several weeks.

But when the university reopened, the classes were lost for good. Not necessarily because the lecturing staff or students didn’t want to make them up, but just because there was no time.

In January 2008, during the long semesterisation dispute, the university even announced publicly that it would go easy on students at exam time.

This is what it said at the time:

‘In the event students find difficulty in answering questions based on material not covered in lectures, Senate has advised that students report such instances to their class representatives who should, in turn, inform the Examinations Officer in writing so that remedial action may be taken through appropriate University structures. The Senate took the position that no students should be disadvantaged on account of questions based on material not covered in lectures.’

Put simply this meant that students would only be examined on what they did manage to cover in class and not what they were meant to cover.

So much for UNISWA’s ‘robust quality assurance measures’.